What You Should Know:
– Central Logic acquires Acuity Link to power the company’s
Intelligent Transport capabilities, speeding time to care in the best setting.
– In addition, the company rolls out a new interoperable Bed Visibility capability that offers a real-time snapshot into available beds across the enterprise for improved access and enhanced revenue capture.
Central
Logic, a St. Paul, MN-based healthcare access and orchestration company,
has acquired Acuity Link, a leading
provider of transportation communications and logistics management software.
Acuity Link’s technology powers Central Logic’s new Intelligent Transport capability, which was announced
today along with the company’s real-time Bed Visibility platform.
The addition of Intelligent Transport and Bed Visibility to
Central Logic’s industry-leading platform solidifies the company’s leadership
in healthcare access and orchestration, by providing best-in-class technology
tools focused on elevating health system operations that support greater
clinician effectiveness, better outcomes and increased revenue capture.
“This strategic acquisition—which follows our recent acquisition of Ensocare—further demonstrates that Central Logic delivers the most comprehensive access and orchestration solution and services in the industry, with a focus on enabling health systems to ‘operate as one’ by providing innovative technologies that bring disparate processes, information and locations together,” said Angie Franks, CEO of Central Logic.
Acquisition Automates the Transport Request and Tracking Process
Transportation coordination related to patient transfers and
other transitions of care is still a highly manual, inefficient process at many
health systems. Health system access center agents, who manage patient
transfers, discharges and other transitions of care, often need to call multiple
transportation companies and must record key milestones manually.
Central Logic recognized this challenge facing its health
system clients and sought to address it by forming a strategic relationship
with Acuity Link in 2019 to co-develop the Intelligent Transport coordination
and communication tool.
“The acquisition of Acuity Link advances our focus on holistically addressing our clients’ strategic business goals around revenue capture, care delivery, and the infrastructure required to excel in both value-based care and fee-for-service environments,” Franks said. “This is one more validation of our commitment to meeting the full access and orchestration vision of the health systems with whom we partner.”
Intelligent Transport is a vendor-agnostic solution that
automatically considers all types of patient transportation modes, acuity
levels, healthcare settings and even the health system’s contracting
obligations. Intelligent Transport’s proprietary algorithms suggest the most
efficient, clinically appropriate and cost-effective means of transport—from
aircraft to ride-share—and arranges transportation in just seconds. In many
cases, patients are delivered to the care setting 75% faster than through
manual workflows.
This faster end-to-end transport process decreases bed cycle
times and expedites bed availability with timely transport to, from and between
sites of care. Intelligent Transport’s algorithms ensure contract compliance,
with access center agents easily able to adhere to the health system’s policies
around vendor rights and obligations.
Intelligent Transport also offers real-time geo-tracking of
transport status so access centers always know where the patient is in their
journey and can work proactively with all pertinent information at their
fingertips.
Bed Visibility Offers Real-Time, Enterprise-Wide
Perspective
Central Logic’s new Bed Visibility capability addresses
another critical component of successful patient transfers and transitions of
care: The ability to know quickly and easily where the right type of bed,
specialist care and other important resources are available within the health
system, so patients can receive the level of care they need more quickly.
Central Logic’s Bed Visibility solution retrieves
information seamlessly within the platform and displays all necessary data
points—including average wait times, emergency department pre-admits, and
availability by service line and facility—in a single, easy-to-understand view.
Without Bed Visibility, the health system’s EHR or bed
management tools require agents in access centers to open various applications
and click through multiple screens to view the information—wasting precious
time that can affect clinical outcomes. Further, the inefficiency and waiting
that often occur can be frustrating, and the failure to quickly identify an
appropriate bed is a leading cause of patient leakage to competitors.
With automated, real-time visibility into that information
via Bed Visibility, a hospital’s access center can increase satisfaction—and
future referrals—from referring providers, while also decreasing leakage and
improving keepage.
“Bed Visibility, when supported by our full platform, can help health systems realize an improved patient census, especially within their specialty centers such as those focused on heart and vascular, neurology or orthopedics,” Franks said. “Every patient that is successfully referred, transferred and admitted brings an average of nearly $11,000 in revenue to the health system, which could result in millions of dollars annually to the bottom line with just 100 additional transfers per month, for a total of 1200 per year.”
